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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044106">Running to the Sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled'>Pixeled</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Compilation of Final Fantasy VII</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Father and son dynamics, Gen, M/M, Origin Story, Tseng has innate magical abilities, Turk Origins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:00:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,014</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044106</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixeled/pseuds/Pixeled</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“When one has fallen to his knees in the ocean and has been helped up from drowning and has been given a new life, that man remembers, and his memory extends far beyond what is given. The ocean grows inside, swells beyond,” Tseng said.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Vincent Valentine/Veld</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Running to the Sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>To: “Running to the Sea” by Röyksopp and “Distant Land” by Filip Lackovic</p><p>I’ve been wanting to write this for a while now, Tseng’s Turk Origin Story. :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You hungry, kid?”</p><p>The child had large almond-shaped brown wet eyes. He was huddled under a dirty blanket, but there was a byakugō on his forehead. He was a Buddhist Wutain. The most rural and poor of the Wutains, but mostly by choice, as they believed there was no need for earthly possessions.</p><p>“I’m going to assume you are. Can you come with me? Do you know Standard?”</p><p>The child only looked at him blankly, then tentatively reached a hand outside the blanket. It was trembling, hand cupped palm up.</p><p>“Please,” the child said. It was heavily accented and might have been the only thing he knew how to say in Standard. Veld motioned for him to get up and follow him. The child stood slowly, weakly, as if he hadn’t had a meal in a long time. Veld walked until he ducked into a restaurant that had a curtain. The child hesitated. Veld parted the curtain. The child was barefoot, perhaps concerned about his level of filth, but Veld motioned him to come. It wouldn’t be hard to convince the proprietors. He was the Director of Administrative Research at ShinRa, after all. The child tentatively followed, his big eyes taking in the sight.</p><p>There was an area where several men were making sushi and sashimi, various scrolls depicting Wutain history across the walls. He made a confused face.</p><p>“You came from Wutai, right?” Veld asked.</p><p>The child pointed at himself excitedly. “Wutai.” Then he mimed the water and what looked like a boat.</p><p>The waitress walked over. A harried Wutain woman who looked at the kid wish a disgusted scowl on her face, but when she saw Veld her face lit up.</p><p>“Taking street rats to home again, Mr. Veld?” Her Standard was heavily accented, but she’d always gotten her point across.</p><p>“Two bowls of udon to start,” Veld told her. “And two Wutain sodas and green tea,” he smiled. She smiled back, bowed a little, and walked away to the back, shouting at the cooks in the back, who shouted back. She waved her hand, annoyed, and when the kid looked at her he started talking.</p><p>“He want pork bun. Ok, Mr. Veld?”</p><p>“Whatever the kid wants.”</p><p>She returned to yell at the cooks in the back.</p><p>“Be short time, okay?” she assured Veld, then went to grab the sodas from the refrigerator. Next she brought over a steaming pot of green tea and two clay cups. “You let steep,” she said seriously.</p><p>The kid looked up at her tentatively and said something in Wutain. She responded and smiled, then walked away.</p><p>It wasn’t long before the waitress returned with the udon and the pork bun.</p><p>“Hey,” Veld said, eyes up on the waitress’s face. “Can you ask him what his name is for me?”</p><p>She turned to the kid, asked in Wutain, and the kid answered, head down.</p><p>“His name is Tseng,” the waitress said. “No last name. Common in country. Very small.”</p><p>“Thanks, Misaka,” Veld smiled. “Tell him my name is Veld and I’m going to take him home with me and he can get a shower.</p><p>Misaka explained this very carefully. Tseng looked at Veld with disbelief and smiled widely, saying something over and over in Wutain.</p><p>“He thank you,” she said, then went to clean the counter tops.</p><p>Veld watched Tseng eat. He probably hadn’t had a real meal in a long time, because he ate like he’d never get another chance again.He only took breaths in between when he had to, and he drank the tea down greedily.The soda Veld taught him how to open, but then he drained it in half a second. The pork bun stood no chance either, and he slurped the udon after the noodles were done. When he was finished eating he smiled. Veld finished after.</p><p>“Thanks again for your help, Misaka,” Veld told the Wutain woman. He threw down the tab, plus a generous tip. Tseng stared at the amount of Gil as if fascinated.</p><p>“See Mr. Veld soon?” Misaka asked, scooping up the money and stuffing it in her apron pocket along with the bill.</p><p>“Very soon. Kid seemed to like your food.”</p><p>“Mostly live off rice in country. This feast for country boy.”</p><p>He waved and then he motioned for Tseng to come along.</p><p>Veld didn’t live above the plate, even though he certainly had the option if he wanted it. He just didn’t want that life. It was bad enough being above the plate every day for work. His parents had lived below the plate, so he did too. Humble roots, humble life. Still, it was a nice apartment, if a bit like a bachelors pad. None of the furniture matched, it was all bought second hand, and the couch had duct tape on the arms. But the shower worked like a charm, his bed was soft, his TV was nice and big, and he felt like he wanted for nothing. Plus, you could hear the train rumble through the apartment occasionally, which relaxed him, and when you stepped outside there was so much diversity. People from all over Gaia lived in Midgar.</p><p>He gave Tseng a garbage bag. His intention was that the kid throw out all his clothes. They were filthy and beyond repair. Tseng tilted his head, furrowed his brow. Maybe he didn’t know what a garbage bag was?</p><p>Veld went to go grab an old TV dinner, threw it in the garbage bag, then dragged the blanket off Tseng, who tried to keep it and made a whining noise.</p><p>“Please,” Veld said, remembering earlier that Tseng knew that word.</p><p>Tseng let go of the blanket finally, big eyes wet, fear in them. Beneath, he was wearing a pair of pants held together with a bit of rope, and a filthy white t-shirt. He was so thin Veld could see his ribs through the shirt. He had a lotus flower in his hands and he offered it to Veld. Veld raised a brow. It was pristine and beautiful, untouched by filth or harm. He placed it to the side. Next he took Tseng’s hand and led him to the bathroom. He left him for a moment to get a pair of his pajamas. He’d have to help Tseng make alterations so they could fit, but they had a drawstring that could be tied tightly. The shirt would just consume him. He’d get him clothes tomorrow.He put the pajamas on the sink and a towel, showed him how to use the faucets on the shower, and turned it on for him.</p><p>Tseng looked at Veld as he left. Those haunting eyes followed Veld into the living room. Many years ago, those brown eyes had been red. But Tseng was much younger, more fragile, and things would be different. Things, he repeated, would be different.</p><p>It felt like forever. Veld had been staring at the wall, twirling the lotus flower in his fingers, his thoughts a mess of things. He wasn’t sure why he saw this kid and had to help him. He passed helpless hungry kids all the time.It was Midgar. Everyone was poor and hungry below the plate. Sometimes he gave them a bit of Gil, but sometimes not. Tseng was different. There was something different to him. What was it?</p><p>Was it a second chance?</p><p>Was it just a glimmer of the future he could see but couldn’t understand?</p><p>Why was this lotus flower so fresh? Tseng had no money to buy flowers.There <em>weren’t </em>flowers in Midgar. But he had no hope of asking him.</p><p>Finally the door to the bathroom opened. Tseng popped his head out, saw Veld, and said “please”.</p><p>Veld came to the bathroom to help him tie the pants. As expected, the shirt was way too big, the cuffs flowing over and past his hands.It was a little adorable, if Veld was being honest.</p><p>He had a spare room. Always had. It was the room that Vincent had used. Remembering that made him sad, but he took Tseng’s hand and brought him into the room. He kept it made. He didn’t know why. He changed the sheets every so often. He didn’t want to examine why, but he knew why deep down. He pulled the comforter and bottom sheet down and helped Tseng into bed. He tucked him in. Tseng reached his hand out, the sleeve sliding down to reveal his perfect alabaster arm and fine-boned hand. Veld took the small hand in his. He cupped the other one over it and then let go. He stood up to leave, but Tseng tugged on his shirt.</p><p>“You want me to stay until you fall asleep, huh?” Veld asked. He kicked off his shoes and then carefully laid beside Tseng. He didn’t intend for it to happen, but Tseng curled close, rested his cheek on Veld’s chest and clung, shaking with fear. Veld frowned. Why there was fear, he didn’t know, and couldn’t ask. Maybe he thought it was a dream? Tseng finally fell asleep, but Veld laid there well after, until he himself fell asleep.</p><p>In the morning, when Veld woke up, he was momentarily confused. He wasn’t in his bed, there was a child clinging to him, and he was still in his suit from yesterday. Then he remembered it all and sighed. He gently slipped out from beneath Tseng and put his shoes back on, going into the kitchen, taking a deep shaky breath, and getting all the ingredients together to makes eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Tseng had probably never had any of that. Maybe eggs? Did they keep chickens or Chocobos in Wutai? He had no idea. Anyway, he was going to make him a big breakfast.</p><p>Halfway through Tseng came out of the bedroom wiping his eyes with the edges of the giant sleeves of Veld’s pajama top.The smell must have woken him up.</p><p>Veld was in the middle of flipping a pancake. He turned to look back at Tseng, smiled, and said good morning in Wutain like he’d  practiced it.</p><p>“Tseng, ohayo gozaimasu.”</p><p>“Ohayo, Verudo-san,” Tseng said, smiling softly.</p><p>“Veld,” Veld said, pointing at himself.</p><p>“Ve….e…rudo…” Tseng shook his head, made a determined face, then said: “Ve…ludo.”</p><p>“Close. L’s are hard for you guys, I’m told. Anyway.” He gestured to the table. Tseng got up on a seat, his feet dangling. He was small for his age. Maybe malnutrition? Well, that wouldn’t be a problem soon.</p><p>Veld plated all the food on two plates then placed one in front of Tseng and one in front of himself.</p><p>He poured himself coffee then realized he’d made too much. He hadn’t made enough coffee for two since…</p><p>He poured a second cup and brought it over to Tseng, letting him sniff it. Tseng took hold of the mug with a very studious face and took a big whiff, then slowly, carefully, took a sip. Veld expected him to hate it because he only ever bought dark roast beans, and that usually wasn’t a child’s thing, but Tseng drank it with no fuss. He put the mug down, looked up at Veld, gave him a shy smile, and took the fork and knife, looking at them like foreign objects.</p><p>Veld demonstrated how to use them and Tseng picked it up quickly, although he was stabbing his food a little too vigorously. He’d get used to it. Probably. After they were done eating, Veld turned on the television and handed Tseng the remote. He didn’t really know how to tell him he needed to go to work.</p><p>Tseng looked at him curiously when Veld retreated to his bedroom, then went into the bathroom, then picked up his keys and wallet. Veld looked at him apologetically, but then he turned, opened the door, and locked it behind him.</p><p>He’d make it up to him, somehow.</p><p>—</p><p>A week in, it became apparent to Veld he needed to do something about the language barrier. He’d already taken Tseng clothes-shopping. In proper clothes, he looked like a little lord. His hair was long and shiny and he was very serious, as if he had the weight of the world on his head like a crown. He didn’t play with other kids, so he needed to entertain him somehow, so he hired a teacher to teach him how to read and speak, and then another to teach him how to play the violin. On weekends, Veld took him to the shooting range and taught him how to shoot various guns. It was almost eerie how fast he picked up how to use every gun. To Veld, his mind was made up. He’d just have to wait a few years.</p><p>Similarly, Tseng was picking up Standard very quickly. Soon they could communicate in a very rudimentary way. Then a few months after that Tseng had a very decent vocabulary and a sharp dry wit. There was barely the hint of an accent when he spoke, as if he absorbed the way people around him enunciated things. The teacher told Veld that he’d never seen a child pick up a language so quickly at this age. Usually younger children picked up languages quicker because their minds were not already primed with another.</p><p>The violin also came easy to him and he played it for Veld often.</p><p>It was very apparent that Tseng was a precocious child, proficient with a great many things, and that he’d probably join the Turks at an age that was unheard of. So he took him to martial arts classes to supplement his skill with firearms. He took to it like water. The ease with which his limbs moved looked like an elaborate dance, and it was often deadly. He’d hurt a few children a few years his senior because he simply did not know his own strength, which led to him holding back some until he advanced, which he did quickly. Soon, he was fighting with boys twice his age and winning.</p><p>The teacher pulled Veld aside.  </p><p>“Your son is extraordinary.”</p><p>It was the first time anyone had called Tseng his son and he smiled. He supposed he was.</p><p>“The teacher called me your son,” Tseng said, walking over after he’d changed out of his gi, hair a messy topknot above his head. Of course he’d been spying.</p><p>“Do you want to be my son?” Veld asked cautiously.</p><p>“My parents abandoned me,” Tseng said, taking Veld’s hand. “You are my true father.”</p><p>The walk home was silent. Veld wanted to say so many things but didn’t know how to say them.</p><p>As they entered the door Tseng looked up at Veld, but he didn’t have to look up too far. He was growing. Soon he would be taller than Veld. He was thirteen tomorrow. Veld planned on telling him then, but Tseng always knew when things were on Veld’s mind.</p><p>“I’m going to take a shower, then we will have discourse.” So formal. It made Veld shake his head and smile. He poured himself a stiff drink, shucked his shoes off, and sat on the couch. He sipped it slowly, his mind a roving mess.</p><p>Finally Tseng came out of the shower. He was wearing silk pajamas, combing his long hair out.</p><p>“I want a haircut tomorrow,” Tseng said, as if he hadn’t seen Veld sitting in the dark nursing a drink.</p><p>“It’s your birthday. Whatever you want.”</p><p>“It gets in the way when I’m training. It would be much easier to pull it up into a tight ponytail. Not too short. I don’t like short hair.”</p><p>“Okay,” Veld said.</p><p>“What’s wrong with you?” Tseng asked, tilting his head in that way he did when he didn’t understand something.</p><p>There were indeed things that Tseng did not get, and they were often of the emotional variety. Perhaps he’d never been exposed to it. Perhaps Veld was not warm enough. Either way, Tseng was often puzzled by simple things, when his mind could grasp things that very complicated. He’d often come back from the library with books that Veld didn’t know the first thing about. Most of it was about magic and science. He was fascinated by botany and would study different flowers: edible, poisonous, for show, for hours until he fell asleep with his head on the book. On more than several occasions Veld carried Tseng to bed to tuck him in. He paused at his door, remembering that night that he’d wanted him to stay. But he was too big now. Now he didn’t need Veld to protect him.</p><p>“I’ve just been thinking. You don’t know what I do.”</p><p>“You work above the plate. I’ve gathered at least that much,” Tseng said.</p><p>“Yes, that is technically true. I have an office above the plate.”</p><p>“But you don’t stay there all the time?”</p><p>“No. You know how I take you to the shooting range? And pay for martial arts classes?”</p><p>“I assumed you were training me for something,” Tseng said.</p><p>“You’re too smart for your own good,” Veld sighed, taking another sip of his drink. “I will offer you the job. But only accept it until I’ve explained it in detail and you understand the ramifications.”</p><p>“I’ll have to kill people. Bad men.”</p><p>“Not always bad people,” Veld admitted. “People you’re assigned to kill. Could be a <em>lot</em> of people. You don’t get a choice or a say in it. You just do what the assignment dictates. Good person, bad person, whatever. Sometimes you will disagree. You still have to comply.”</p><p>“Do I get paid?” Tseng asked.</p><p>“A good amount,” Veld had to admit. Killing made a killing, as some of the Turks liked to say.</p><p>“How does it feel? Killing someone?” Tseng was tilting his head again. Curious.</p><p>“I threw up the first time. It gets easier, until it’s <em>too</em> easy. You don’t even blink. It feels natural. You don’t think, and that’s the scary part. You’re taking a life, and it feels as natural as taking a leak. But it does take a toll.”</p><p>“You’re a good man,” Tseng asserted.</p><p>“I’m really not, Tseng. You’ll see, if you accept. I’m the Director of the Department of Administrative Research, or what we call ourselves: The Turks. I would be your boss.”</p><p>“I accept,” Tseng nodded, brushing his hair back.</p><p>“No special treatment,” Veld told him.</p><p>“I wouldn’t want that,” Tseng said fiercely.</p><p>“You’ll be the youngest,” Veld told him. “I know I said no special treatment, but my door is always open for difficulties with the job. Everyone has that right.”</p><p>“I’ll be fine,” Tseng asserted, and then he was padding away to brush his teeth, put his comb away, and slip into his bed for the last time as an innocent boy.</p><p>Veld stood in the doorway, a sliver of light illuminating Tseng’s sleep-relaxed face. How easy it was for him to dream now. How easy it was for him to slip into the embrace of sleep.</p><p>Veld had nightmares every night. He took pills that did nothing. He didn’t know why he was committing Tseng to this life.</p><p>On the other hand, he had felt the heavy weight of destiny from the first night he took Tseng’s hand and led him away from a life of misery, hunger, and eventual death.There was that fierce glimmer in Tseng’s beautiful almond eyes.</p><p>—</p><p>Two years passed like the wind upon a sail.</p><p>Tseng was a fine Turk. He disarmed before he killed, but in most situations the target wouldn’t relent, and when that happened he killed indiscriminately. He always prayed for the dead. He could lift them from the lifestream as if on strings and bless them before they departed.</p><p>He wore his hair in a high ponytail, as requested.</p><p>He looked good in a suit. It matched the seriousness of his demeanor. His face no longer looked cherubic, replaced with high cheekbones and a sharp chin.  </p><p>When he was assigned to Aerith’s protection, he didn’t know who she was. He was older by a few years. She had a garden that made him smile. That first day he crouched beside her dying lilies and made them blossom. From that moment on he’d won her affection.</p><p>“You are special, Tseng of the Turks,” Aerith said with a serious tone. “You can make flowers grow! Just like me! You have a gift, bestowed from the planet!”</p><p>That night Tseng and Veld ate out.</p><p>“Heard you got chummy with that girl,” Veld said carefully.</p><p>“She’s nice,” Tseng shrugged.</p><p>“Don’t get too close. One day they might ask you to execute her.”</p><p>“They won’t,” Tseng said in such a sure manner that Veld was taken aback.</p><p>“What makes you say that?” Veld asked.</p><p>“She’s very important. I can tell. She glows with the radiance of Minerva herself.”</p><p>“Yeah, well, don’t go falling in love, either,” Veld grumbled.</p><p>“I won’t,” Tseng said. “It’s not like that.”</p><p>“If you say so.”</p><p>—</p><p>Years later, Veld was seeing a woman in secret. He’d gotten her pregnant. He was going to do the right thing. He decided to leave the Turks and made Tseng the Director. He knew Tseng was the only choice. He would go, try to live a peaceful life, although he knew it wasn’t what he deserved.</p><p>Tseng continued to protect Aerith well after she met a young gentleman named Zack. Well after she met a young gentleman named Cloud.</p><p>Aerith was the little sister Tseng never had.</p><p>And when Aerith died, a piece of Tseng died too, but he continued to tend to her flowers, for she had shown him kindness, and she was magic and beauty and light and the closest thing to an angel he had ever seen.</p><p>The darkness had killed the light.</p><p>The first thing Tseng did was force the helicopter to land in Junon. He ran out to the water like a man possessed, both hands clutching clumps of sand that slowly drained back to the floor and as he got deep enough for the water to touch his chin and he screamed into the night.</p><p>The river flowed beneath his skin like savage horses kept within.</p><p>Veld was a mystery for a long time. Tseng heard this and that,  but long after Sephiroth and his remnants came and went, when Edge was quiet once more, Veld walked back into Tseng’s life. He was an old man now. His left arm was replaced by a prosthetic, his wife and daughter were dead, and once again they met as father and son, and that repaired a lot of hurt in Veld’s life.</p><p>And then there was Vincent Valentine.</p><p>The way Veld and Vincent danced around each other, never meeting, never speaking, drew Tseng’s attention.  </p><p>“You hurt him. A long time ago,” Tseng said, talking in his office.</p><p>“I did.”</p><p>“The resemblance cannot be ignored,” Tseng said.</p><p>“He’s half Wutain. I…sent him away. He died. That is why he is the way he is.”</p><p>“You tried to make up past wrongs with me.”</p><p>“Not exactly. Maybe at first. But you truly are my son.”</p><p>“It was true. What you said. It gets easier, until it’s <em>too </em>easy. I feel my humanity slipping.”</p><p>“I’m told you tend to the flowers in the church and around Aerith’s home.”</p><p>“It’s my one last tie to magic. When she died, it felt like all the good seeped from the world, all the magic going with her.”</p><p>“You loved her,” Veld said fondly.</p><p>“Not truly. As one loves an angel.”</p><p>“Have you ever loved anyone?” Veld asked.</p><p>“You. But you are my father.”</p><p>“You know what I mean,” Veld said.</p><p>“Perhaps. But it is complicated.”</p><p>“It always is,” Veld smiled.</p><p>“Talk to Valentine,” Tseng said softly.</p><p>“You always know,” Veld said.</p><p>“When one has fallen to his knees in the ocean and has been helped up from drowning and has been given a new life, that man remembers, and his memory extends far beyond what is given. The ocean grows inside, swells beyond,” Tseng said.</p><p> </p><p> </p>
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